Żyrardów (pop. 41k) is former factory town. It was named after Philippe de Girard, a French engineer and one of the directors of the textile factory, which was the reason for the town.
"This is Żyrardów. It looks like a piece of a most orderly German province, or some industrial Swiss canton. The streets are straight, wide, hard, footpaths are comfortable, streets are separated from footpaths by deep little canals. Red brick houses, multi-storey, solid, not ugly. Cleanliness everywhere delights the eyes. And a lot of greenery." - "Kraj" magazine, 1903.
How to get there? By train of course. Żyrardów is on the Warsaw-Vienna line, a standard gauge railway opened in 1845:
Historical buildings: orange - residential and services, grey - industrial.
The factory was connected to the mainline and had its own tracks and locomotives:
From the train station it is a short walk to the historical parts, but before I got there I saw a mix of nice and ugly. The town government should do better regarding graffiti, and the town overall still needs a lot of TLC (tender loving care):
An old commie block is a scar that is not easily fixable, but it could at least be renovated?
Is the Prime Minister Donald Tusk Hitler? Or is it about one of the football clubs? Either way, ugly.
Cars ruin cities.
Nice apartments.
Abandoned?
"kibol" is a Polish word for a football hooligan, an aggressive frustrated male prone to defacing fences, beating up others and other immoral behaviour. The person currently acting as the President of Poland is one (there were many voting irregularities, no recount, and other serious issues - the legal situation after 8 years of PiS rule is a mess).
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